1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information classification supporting apparatus for supporting the classification of information.
2. Description of the Related Art
A hypertext is a methodology for linking together a plurality of items of electronic data. It is a network-like collection of data which is prepared by systematically managing the items of data, divided into logical units, in units called nodes, and by expressing the linkage between the nodes by means of links.
Such a hypertext is a text which is arranged by making maximum use of characteristics of a computer without adhering to the format of a document printed on paper (a so-called linear document).
A hypertext system is capable of performing documentation support, documentation management, document retrieval, multimedia data management, and multimedia data retrieval in an integrated manner.
As conventional hypertext systems, those disclosed in a document "Hypertext: An Introduction and Survey. IEEE Computer, 20, 9, 17-41. Chapel Hill, N.C. 1987" are known.
As an example of such a hypertext system, the NoteCards System (marketed on March 1985) which was developed at the Palo Alto Institute of Xerox Corp. of the United States is known. This NoteCards System realized an environment in which a text editor, a sketch editor, a graph editor, a bit-map editor, and the like which are displayed on a display unit of a personal computer are handled as nodes (called cards in the NoteCards) of the hypertext, and data of such as articles, manuals, and textbooks is registered on the cards. In this environment, the cards are freely interlinked by means of the links to form a network, and the network is stored in a file.
The links of the NoteCards can be located at arbitrary positions in all the cards as visualized pointers, or the links can be stored as internal properties of the cards without being displayed in the cards. In addition, the cards and links of the NoteCards can be arbitrarily prepared by the users and registered in the system.
Furthermore, the NoteCards provide a browsing function in which the configuration of the overall network is filtered depending on the properties of the cards and the links and the direction and depth of the links, and is then visually displayed and edited. Also, the NoteCards provides a cross file link mechanism in which the links provide correspondence between the cards in an independent network in units of files on the one hand, and the cards in a different network on the other. This cross file link mechanism is described in a document "NoteCards in a Nutshell. Proceedings of the ACM CHI+GI Conference (pp. 45-52). Toronto. 1987)."
As for the hypertext technique, research and development have been conducted in two aspects, i.e., for the purpose of managing and expressing information and for the purpose of supporting ideas through the sorting out and classification of knowledge.
Conventionally, however, a hypertext system of a sort which automates the sorting out and classification of qualitative information, which is difficult to numerically process, has not, of course, been realized, nor has it been developed. The reason for this is that, to completely automate the sorting out and classification of knowledge, highly sophisticated techniques, including expression of knowledge, an inference mechanism, and a cognitive mechanism of qualitative information which are based on artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, become essential.
Accordingly, in the above-described conventional hypertext system, in performing the operation of the sorting out and classification of qualitative information, it has been necessary to manually perform a visual classifying operation such as the KJ method (a technique developed by the anthropologist Jiro Kawakita, and so called after his initials). In addition, it has been necessary for a human being to recognize information within a node or window of a hypertext or information on a graphics editor and determine the classification thereof, and to manually move the information by means of a pointing device such as a mouse in accordance with that classification. For this reason, the operation of sorting out and classification of qualitative information has been complicated, and much time has been required in the operation.
It should be noted that the KJ method is a method in which, with regard to the respective fields of the future, the near future, the unknown, and the unexperienced, facts, opinions, and conceptions are grasped as linguistic data, and diagrams synthesizing them through affinity among them are prepared on cards, so as to clarify the sources and forms of problems to be solved.